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The Doctor, still in emotional turmoil from the recent loss of one of his best friends, Donna, stuck his hands in his pockets and walked halfway around the TARDIS console, dragging his feet and looking at the floor. He missed Donna; and it had been a while since he’d had a companion that had absolutely no romantic interest in him. Martha was at least smart enough to leave before something horrible happened, and Rose- oh, Rose…
The Doctor stiffened and took his hands out of his pockets, his arms limp by his sides. He didn’t want to think about Rose. He wanted to forget her, but at the same time, he didn’t. Forget…the word made him start missing Donna all over again. Out of all the things that had happened to his companions, including death, hers could quite possibly have been the most tragic. Some companions at least died with the wonderful memories he’d given and shared with them, some went home before anything horrible happened at all, leaving him alone…and some were trapped in parallel universes. Well, one was. At least Rose could still remember the Doctor.
The Doctor gathered his bearings and flipped a couple of switches on the console. The scanner turned on, and as he floated past the Earth, he noticed something, like a swarm cloud, drifting towards it. He steered the TARDIS nearer and enhanced the scanner viewfinder. His hearts nearly stopped when he realized he was looking at millions of Daleks, flying towards the Earth. It seemed strange that they weren’t in their ship, and were flying unprotected into the Earth’s atmosphere. Something didn’t quite add up, and he knew he couldn’t let the Daleks anywhere near Earth if he could help it.
The Doctor calculated the trajectory of the Daleks’ flight pattern and punched in coordinates for Earth. Of course, he had accidentally mixed up the time and space coordinates, and ended up on Earth an hour after the Daleks had already gotten there. The Doctor panicked and ran out from the TARDIS, looking desperately for his most ancient enemies. If only I had a companion to help me…he thought. Suddenly, he heard the gratingly familiar Dalek voice, though it was muffled and distant and he couldn’t make out the words it spoke. He ran towards the sound, anger bubbling up inside him. He had no idea what this would lead to – another victory for him and the planet Earth against aliens, or letting them slip through his fingers again? Would it possibly even lead to another regeneration…? The fury rose inside him, and he burst through the door of a grocery store to see Daleks roaming the aisles, frightening the minds out of the customers. But that was it…they were only frightening them. They weren’t exterminating anyone.
“Daleks! In the name of the Shadow Proclamation, I order you to leave now!”
The Daleks stopped and swiveled their heads to direct their eyestalks at the Doctor.
“It is the Predator! Exterminate!” they screamed.
“Now, hold on, hold on! In section 19, article 48, paragraph 12 of the Shadow Proclamation, it is clearly stated that invading and murdering the dominant life forms a level 5 planet is forbidden! And I know you know that, so why have you all of a sudden shown up, unprotected and without defenses?” the Doctor interrogated.
“We are not defenseless. Daleks are superioooor!”
“Then what have you got? Don’t tell me you call those little eggbeaters weapons!” the Doctor mocked.
“Scan complete! The Doctor is unarmed!” another Dalek screeched.
“Unarmed? Ha! Don’t you remember all the times I’ve defeated you, when I was so-called ‘defenseless’?” the Doctor countered.
“You were not defenseless when you ended the Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords!” the Dalek pointed out.
The Doctor’s emotional state immediately plummeted back into the vortex of emotional turmoil he’d only just pushed away to focus his attention of the potential hazard of Dalek invasion.
“That- that was not my fault! I had to! The Daleks would’ve- you would’ve—” the Doctor stopped himself. Daleks only knew hate; he couldn’t reason with them by telling them how he committed the near genocide of two races at once – one of them his own.
“What are you doing on Earth? What happened to Skaro?” the Doctor demanded. “Tell me why you’re here!”
“Pickles!” the Dalek screeched.
The Doctor froze. “…Pickles?”
“That-is-correct!” the Dalek replies.
“You can’t be serious. Pickles? Really?”
“You are not mistaken, Doctor! Skaro is a glorious planet that lacks something only huuuumans have been known to create – pickllles! Pickles! Piiiiiicklllllesss!”
All the Daleks began screaming “Pickles” like it was their war cry. “Pickles! Pickles! Pickles!”
“Blimey…” he mumbled to himself, “what is the universe coming to?”
The Doctor went down an aisle and grabbed a jar of pickles.
“This!” he yelled, getting the Daleks’ attention again. They stopped chanting to listen to him.
“This?” he repeated, only as a question this time. “You want this?”
One of the Daleks rolled up to the Doctor to inspect the jar of pickles. It did a quick scan and replied, “These are the objects we have been searching for! The Doctor is our saaaaviour!”
“The Doctor is not our saviour! He is the Predator!” another Dalek protested.
“But he found the valued dill pickles. The huuumans were not so obedient to tell us where to find them!” the first Dalek replied.
“The humans are the Predators! The Doctor is our saviour!” another Dalek exclaimed.
“Daleks are superior to all lifeforms, including the Doctor!” the other Dalek continued to protest.
“We could convert him. He would make a good Dalek leader!”
“Hold on, Daleks!” the Doctor interrupted, thinking this couldn’t possibly be happening as he held up the jar of pickles. “Will you return to Skaro if each Dalek is given a jar of pickles?”
“That would be a…fair negotiation,” a Dalek agreed.
“Then it’s agreed. I’ll get each Dalek a jar of pickles, if you just tell me how many of you are on Earth and—”
“Hold on, who is paying for this?” A man, the Doctor assumed was the store manager, walked in. The Doctor reached into his bigger-on-the-inside pockets and pulled out a wad of cash which must’ve added up to a few hundred quid, maybe even a few thousand, and handed it to the man.
“This should cover it,” the Doctor said as the wide-eyed manager took the money from him.
The Daleks in the grocery store summoned the others, and they lined up at the checkout where the Doctor handed them each a jar of pickles as they strolled through. They held the jars with their suction cups, and screamed, “Praise the Doctor, our saviour!” as they received them. By the end of the day when the Daleks had left to return to Skaro with plenty of pickles, the Doctor had gotten a lot of pickle brine stains on his suit. Luckily, he had more than one suit like the one he was wearing. He went into the TARDIS to change. “That had to be the weirdest thing I’ve ever done in my life…” the Doctor said to himself as he hung up his stained jacket and put on a clean one.

The Doctor woke up in the TARDIS. He didn’t even remember falling asleep. He was on the floor underneath the console room. As he strained his memory, he remembered he had been tweaking some glitchy wires and touched one that was vortex sensitive, meaning it would cause the TARDIS to be unreliably unresponsive to time and space coordinates and not always go exactly where and when the Doctor wanted.
And also electrocute him if he touched it. Which he did, and caused him to go unconscious and trigger the strange Dalek-pickles dream. The Doctor had been searching for the broken vortex sensitive wire for ages, literally, but now that he’d found it, he decided to leave it alone. He’d grown fond of the TARDIS sometimes taking him to a surprise place and time, even if it was inconvenient sometimes.
The Doctor made his way back up to the console room, and decided he needed to go clean out Donna’s room. He passed his own wardrobe on the way and caught a glimpse of the duplicate jacket to the one he was currently wearing. Out of curiosity, he went in to the wardrobe and pulled it away from the clothes around it so he could see it properly. He inspected thoroughly…and didn’t find a single pickle brine stain. He laughed softly and said to himself, “No…of course not.” He walked away, shaking his head.
His memory, though, was fuzzier than he realized. He’d checked for stains on his extra brown jacket, but hidden just behind it was, indeed, a blue jacket – covered in pickle stains.